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Cambridge was the top ranked British university (Picture: Getty)British universities might now charge the highest tuition fees on the planet, but that hasn’t stopped them slipping down the world rankings.

Although 10 of the top 100 institutions are British, many have dropped down the 100 Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings.

Flagship establishments Cambridge and Oxford now sit at just fourth and fifth respectively, while the University of Bristol and Durham University are no longer in the top 100.

UK entries

University of Cambridge, 4University of Oxford, 5Imperial College London, 15University College London, 20London School of Economics and Political Science, 24University of Edinburgh, 38King’s College London, 43University of Manchester, 49London Business School, 81-90University of Warwick, 81-90

The drop in ranking comes just months after it was revealed that British universities charged on average £6,000 for tuition fees, moving them ahead of Chile, Japan, America and Korea.

But Britain remains second only to the United States for number of universities making an appearance, with Harvard at the top of the list for the sixth year in a row.

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Times Higher Education rankings editor Phil Baty said the UK’s drop-off comes as Asian universities move up in the rankings and questioned whether funding cuts have contributed.

He said: ‘The UK will have to ensure that it can still draw in talent and investment from across the world and it does not lose its position at the heart of higher education’s global elite.

Both Oxford and Cambridge fell in the rankings (Picture: Getty)‘Outside [a] tiny super group, the global higher education world is changing, and some leading lights in the US and UK, for example, household names, have lost ground, while universities in China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea are all making progress.

‘We now have a Chinese university in the world top 20 for the first time, and another right behind it in the top 30.’

The top 30: Rank and (last year’s rank)

Harvard University was top for six years in a row1 (1) Harvard University United States2 (4) Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States3 (5) Stanford University United States4 (2) University of Cambridge United Kingdom5 (3) University of Oxford United Kingdom6 (6) University of California, Berkeley United States7 (7) Princeton University United States8 (8) Yale University United States

London School of Economics fell two places (Picture: Getty)9 (10) Columbia University United States10 (9) California Institute of Technology United States11 (11) University of Chicago United States12 (12) University of Tokyo Japan13 (13) University of California, Los Angeles United States14 (19) University of Michigan United States15 (14) Imperial College London United Kingdom16 (23) University of Pennsylvania United States

London Imperial College was rated 15th.17 (=20) Cornell University United States18 (26) Tsinghua University China19 (15) ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Switzerland20 (17) University College London United Kingdom21 (32) Peking University China22 (18) Johns Hopkins University United States23 (16) University of Toronto Canada

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University of Warwick also featured in the rankings (Picture; Getty)24 (22) London School of Economics and Political Science United Kingdom25 (=20) New York University United States26 (24) National University of Singapore Singapore27 (27) Kyoto University Japan28 (34) Duke University United States29 (33) University of Washington United States=30 (30) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign United States